The present disclosure relates to embodiments for executing a garbage collection process on a memory block. More specifically, the embodiments relate to executing the garbage collection process while minimizing performance impact.
Garbage collection is an automatic memory management process that identifies objects in memory that are no longer being referenced and frees those objects. As memory objects of varying sizes are allocated and later freed, the memory in which they are stored becomes increasingly fragmented. Eventually, very few large free areas of memory exist, and it becomes difficult to store additional objects without increasing the memory size. When this occurs, a process within garbage collection, referred to as compaction, is employed in order to consolidate the allocated objects into one large area, leaving another large area of free space available for new objects. During consolidation, the memory objects that are still being referenced are moved from one area of memory to another area of memory.
Java virtual machines (JVM) and other runtime environments are a type of memory-managed applications that may occasionally perform a garbage collection operation on the area of memory used by the application. During a garbage collection operation, all other operations of the JVM typically cease, which significantly increases the response time of any transactions. This delay may cause problems for client devices accessing Java virtual machine.